April 2009 Archives

Getting support from others is less about showing how fabulous you are. It's more about showing them you know how fabulous they are. According to personal and professional development expert Brian Tracy in The Power of Charm, acceptance, appreciation, approval, admiration, and attention are key behaviors that make others feel more important and help win them over.

I'd actually add an adjective before each one: sincere. No one wants to be showered with false flattery, but they do like it when you genuinely notice things. And how do you show that? By listening.

Over the last couple of weeks, the topic of listening has come up in a variety of places. From a reporter confiding to me about a source, "He just didn't listen to my questions" to the exasperated look I caught from a friend when the story she was telling was interrupted for the fifth time by one of our dinner companions.

When people don't feel heard, they feel detached from you, and that's dangerous to the health of your personal brand and your network.

In an era of mass A.D.D, has listening become a lost art? How can we become better listeners?

Two ears - one mouth

Listening in person means paying attention to what someone is saying, without jumping in to hog the spotlight with your own insights. When they talk, it's their moment, give them the space to shine. Resist the urge to be their color commentator. It's annoying, for example, when a friend starts saying, "I was on a plane to Salt Lake City last week when...," and you jump in with a personal trivia nugget, "Oh, Salt Lake City, that's such a great place for skiing. It reminds me of the time I..." In other words, leave the pop-up video commentary to VH1.

Showing that you're listening online is even more powerful, because when it's so easy to post our thoughts, activities, and feelings everywhere, we don't want all those thoughts, activities and feelings to be about us. Actively read the blogs and status updates of your network, review their tweets, and share your reactions. Even better is to find opportunities to forward links to their content to your own network to help get their message in front of more people.

Acknowledge those who took the time

I'm definitely trying to get better at responding to blog comments to acknowledge those who've taken the time. It's definitely a work in progress, but I've made it a priority (by the way, if you're going to leave a comment, thank you in advance, I'll give a personalized reply as soon as I can!).

You might be thinking, "Who has time to listen when there is so much to pay attention to?" Just because you can't pay attention to everyone, doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to anyone. Obviously, those whose work is most relevant to you will get more of your focus. And personally, I tend to pay more attention to people who are paying attention to me. It's just human nature, I think. Though you don't want someone to come on too strongly and try to be your BFF after three or four retweets (hey, I can't be bought that cheaply).

To spoof a famous saying, "In the land of the deaf, the one-eared man is king." If you can listen to your customers, your prospects, your interviewers, your colleagues, and your supporters even just a little bit better than your competitors do, you'll have a big advantage even when all else is equal.

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If choice overload for evening activities was a challenge living in New York City for so many years, I definitely don't have that problem now that I'm living Florida. For reliably good entertainment, my husband and I find ourselves quite regularly at the Naples Philharmonic, five minutes from home and with a great track record for attracting world-class artists.

This weekend I got a chance to experience Beethoven's Fifth Symphony live for the first time. Oh sure, I've heard recorded snippets of it many times--and you probably have too--in tv commercials, in movie soundtracks, including a 

disco-fied version in Saturday Night Fever, and in at least one or two Bugs Bunny cartoons.

While Beethoven's famous Fifth was the big draw, it wasn't the only thing on the program. To sell seats, smart music directors choose works with name recognition, but to expand the audience's musical awareness, they mix in less familiar works from other artists. In other words, come for the Beethoven, stay for the Berlioz.

In a sense, Beethoven lends his strong personal brand to help other composers become better known and appreciated.

What an important lesson for all of us. A personal brand is meant to be shared, not hoarded. It's an asset that grows the more you use it, especially to help those in your network. And in fact, the more you use your personal brand in this way, the stronger it becomes and the more capital you accumulate to spread even further, all in a virtuous cycle.

So what are some ways you can leverage your brand to benefit others?

1) Refer: Talk up the people in your network. Write about them in blog posts and articles. Bring them up in conversation. Use them as examples in your presentations. In other words, name drop in a good way.Not to impress those you're talking to, but to make them aware of the good work that's being done by the people you know. For instance, I was speaking on a panel recently with two good friends, Bill Sobel and Laura Allen, when the name of a mutual friend, Adrian Miller, kept coming up. Finally, at some point, Laura chimed in to tell the whole audience who Adrian was and gave a quick pitch for her latest initiative, Adrian's Network.

2) Retweet: One of the best and easiest ways to share your personal brand on Twitter is to retweet a helpful or interesting post from someone you're following. Their message is spread more widely, your followers get the benefit of the information, and your stock rises because people can see you're interested in helping others and engaging in the community, not just broadcasting one-way, self-promotional messages.

3) Recommend: Whenever you get a chance to recommend someone for an opportunity, take it. Don't hide your network from others. For example, I spoke at a series of women's conferences for a couple of years in a row, each year attracting a total of 20,000 women (and a few lucky men!). It was tremendous exposure, and I recommended at least a half dozen of my friends to the conference organizers for future events, where I saw a strong fit between their expertise and the focus of the conference. Another way to lend your personal brand is to endorse a contact on LinkedIn or write a book review on Amazon.

These are just some ideas to get you started. If you spotlight at least one person in your network each week in some way, in a year you'll have 52 stronger relationships, not to mention a stronger personal brand for yourself.

As my friend Warren Whitlock, host of Twitcast Radio and co-author of The Twitter Revolution, says, "When you shine the spotlight on others, YOU shine even brighter."

Read the original post on Personal Branding Blog